The theory of attachment was first developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

The theory of attachment was first developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who discovered that it is vital for a child to attach to an adult who cares for them (Bowlby, 2018). Previously, psychoanalysts believed that an infant maintained a relationship with one’s mother only to satisfy physical needs, and Bowlby added a social component to these needs. Attachment to a significant adult is a testing ground where a child hones one’s ability to form social relationships and determines the degree of one’s basic trust in the world. Subsequently, other researchers continued to develop attachment theory and deduced four main types of attachment from its concepts. The healthiest type of attachment is secure attachment (O’Gorman, 2012). Such children are confident that their mother can meet their needs, and they reach out to her for help when they encounter something unpleasant. At the same time, they feel secure enough to explore the environment, knowing that adults will certainly come to help them in case of danger. In the future, such a child will appreciate love and trust but remain quite independent and self-confident. In this regard, attachment theory is important in nursing as a way to encourage good parental behavior and as a way to create effective health-oriented relationships between parents and nurses. For example, nurses, for their part, can educate parents about the importance of secure attachment as a tool for building a healthy relationship with a child or adolescent (Flaherty & Sadler, 2011). In this way, nurses have the opportunity to raise parental awareness of the links between attachment and bad behavior, between attachment and teenage pregnancy, and between attachment and a child’s willingness to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They should also pay special attention to initiating the right relationship between parents and children, which would be based on full trust, respect, and security and would aim to protect children from the dangers of the outside world (Ali et al., 2021). In other words, by informing parents about the importance of attachment and suggesting how to form it, a nurse would enable them to recognize threat signals on time. In particular, as Hunter & Maunder (2019) point out, people who are securely attached to each other are more open and honest about their problems and fears and share personal information, which is very important in the context of communication between parents and children. Finally, nurses should encourage the emergence of secure attachments between parents and children, and between parents and nurses to create an effective working alliance for health and well-being (Palmer Kelly et al., 2019). In turn, in the absence of secure attachment, the process of nursing health control loses its effectiveness.

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